Bitcoin mercantile exchange

While the hype around bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has sent their prices skyrocketing, some governments and companies are restricting activity to head off potential money laundering and protect consumers from a credit meltdown. Cryptocurrencies have begun to exit once-friendly China for more open nations and other regions and businesses are beginning to impose restrictions on how – or even whether – they can be used. Open blockchains, such as bitcoin, are only the first to be affected by increased regulatory oversight. Depending on how they're used, permissioned blockchains, or those that are centrally administered and used for general transactions, could also be affected by the push to reign in the cryptocurrency technology. With cheap electricity, China was once a haven for vast, power-hungry server complexes that perform the algorithmic processing for bitcoin and other blockchain-based virtual currency networks. In recent years, however, China has gradually … [Read more...] about China’s moves against cryptocurrencies could affect blockchain growth

(Reuters) — Japan’s army of retail investors, no strangers to high risk bets in the past, have emerged as a major force in bitcoin’s spectacular rally, now accounting for an estimated 30-50 percent of trading in the cryptocurrency as it spikes to record highs. Once skeptics, Japanese retail investors have been attracted by the digital currency’s volatility and inefficiencies in pricing that create opportunities to make money on arbitrage between exchanges. “When I first heard about the bitcoin a few years ago, I thought it was a fraud,” said Yoshinori Kobayashi, 39, a former stock trader who took up bitcoin trading two-and-a-half years ago. “But I tried it out after I had come to know some people making money on it. I bought it at 60,000 yen, which quickly become 80,000 yen and I started to regret I hadn’t started earlier,” said Kobayashi, who believes bitcoin is on a long uptrend but took some profits last week. The spectacular … [Read more...] about Japanese retail investors are major force in Bitcoin boom

The iPhone 8 and iPhone X ranked No. 2 and No. 3 respectively in overall searches on Google this year, and No. 1 and No. 2 respectively in the consumer tech search category on the Google Trends Year in Search 2017 list released Tuesday.Bitcoin ranked No. 2 in global news searches, and "how to buy bitcoin" ranked No. 3 among how-to searches on Google in 2017.The Nintendo Switch, Samsung Galaxy S8, and Xbox One X were the third, fourth and fifth most frequently used consumer tech search terms.The lists are based on search terms that had a high spike in traffic in 2017 as compared to 2016."Those issues that directly touch the consumer, or are perceived to do so, will rise in search popularity," said Michael Jude, research manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.The findings "probably correlated with the marketing budgets of the various vendors," Jude told TechNewsWorld.However, "I would have thought that some of the tech services -- connected home stuff, automatic backup services, … [Read more...] about Google Reveals What Searchers Wanted in 2017

Like mobile and cloud, blockchain — first implemented in the original source code of bitcoin in 2009 — stands poised to profoundly disrupt business. If it lives up to its promise, it won't just be financial institutions that are disrupted."If you can transfer money or something of value through the internet just like another form of data, what else can you do with it? It provides a way to establish trust in the digital world," says Angus Champion de Crespigny, Financial Services Blockchain and Distributed Infrastructure Strategy Leader, Ernst & Young. "How do you ensure something is the original copy of something on the internet? Prior to blockchain technology, you couldn't.""If you want to prove something happened in the digital world, there is no more secure place to do that," he adds. "Once information is recorded on there, it is, for all intents and purposes, impossible to go back and retroactively change that. When there are such drastic new technologies that … [Read more...] about How blockchain will disrupt your business